Proust: Collected Essays on the Writer and His Art by J. M. Cocking (review)

240Rocky Mountain Review as From down below, the river sings: Skirt-flounce of sky and leaves. That Lorca intended volante to be skirt-flounce is a possibility; but Cobb notes, in his commentary on "La pena negra": "At the same time, the river is 'Skirt-flounce of sky and leaves,' which at the real level can be leaves eddying in the water and sky reflecting, but the word 'flounce' suggests the skirt worn by the flamenca dancer . . . ." There is a kind of completeness to Cobb's book; he deals with Lorca's life, formative influences, gypsies, and Spanish balladry. Every article and book on Lorca seem to have something to offer. Perhaps it is like Lorca's "Palimpsestos," but instead of an incompletely erased manuscript, Lorca's poetry bleeds through the translations and commentary of the critics. When Cobb, in his "A Summing Up," writes, ". . . Lorca is contemporary man enmeshed in time, . . . This radical insecurity seeks a faith, aground in reality, but Lorca, like many modern poets, has found faith only in the poem achieved, whose very fragility is a source of pride," the reader may be reminded of Lorca's own words: Ante una vidriera rota coso my lírica ropa. JOHN F. KNOWLTON Arizona State University J.M. COCKING. Proust: Collected Essays on the Writer and His Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in French), 1982. 307 p. As the title suggests, this collectaneous volume contains studies on Proust previously published (from the early 1950's to the mid-1970's) by the author. These include a monographic general study, articles dealing with more specialized aspects of Proust's work (e.g., the interrelationships between his novel and the music and painting of his time), as well as several reviews of works on Proust by other scholars. Since Cocking's interpretation of Proust did not change significantly during the years he wrote these essays, there is a great deal of repetition and redundancy in the course ofthis volume. The book reviews make especially uninteresting reading since they do little more than point out differences between Cocking's reading of Proust and that of more recent Proustians. Like other commentators on Proust's novel, Cocking traces its dialectical movement, the hero's progression from imaginative idealism to disillusionment in the face of reality, and the final leap to understanding when he learns to recognize the hidden spirituality of the material world. The main thrust of Cocking's analysis of the Proustian oeuvre, however, is to demonstrate the key role of rational intelligence in the novelist's concept of artistic creation. Cocking shows how the intellect became increasingly important in Proust's aesthetic and counterbalanced the enormous influence of the irrational and Book Reviews241 intuitive in the early stages of Proust's career. The poet (albeit in prose) that Proust originally was in time also became an astute analyst of the social mores of his era, a zoologist mercilessly cataloging the human species of the belle époque. He outgrew or rather supplemented the Romantic-Symbolist idealism which had formed his literary temperament with a classical detachment often accompanied by humor. Without ceasing to be the enthusiastic pursuer of essences he always was, he developed as well into a moraliste in the tradition of La Bruyère and Saint-Simon, an illusionless observer of human behavior, including his own. According to Cocking, Proust hesitated at first between writing a work of lyrical and autobiographical fiction and one of social and literary criticism. These diverging tendencies are revealed in Jean Santeuil and Contre SainteBeuve , both published only after his death. The insight which inspired A la recherche du temps perdu was the realization that he could combine the poetic and the analytical in a single work. By making the discovery of his artistic vocation the principal theme of the work, he could include all the experiences which had contributed to his development without detracting from the novel's unity. His personal neuroses, his readings, his artistic preferences, as well as the people he had encountered, could all be transformed into the stuff of art. JAMES P. GILROY University of Denver JULIAN W. CONNOLLY. Ivan Bunin. Boston: Twayne Publishers , 1982. 159 p...